Pig Clubs’ Section

Northern Advocate, 1 October 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

Pig Clubs’ Section

Specially written by W. A. BEATTIE

Munitions For Breeding ;■ -Sow

Ii seems almost sacrilege to discuss problems of the farm, when Europe, perhaps civilisation, is engaged in problems of so much magnitude, when Chamberlain is trying to choose between crushing Germany perhaps and removing the last barrier to the sweep of Bolshevism over Europe and on the other hand allowing small and gallant democracies to bow before brute force merely to maintain this barrier. Right or wrong, war or no war, people must be fed however, and we must be found doing our work. With this excuse, let \js once again turn to problems of pigkeeping. *

Feeding the Sow It was pointed out hist week how very great is the bearing of feeding of the sow cn developing nealthy litters. The problem connected very intimately with this is; the effect of proper feeding on disease resistance. Nature, during the wonderful processes of evolution, has not forgotten the question of disease resistance. Had it done sc, life would be extinct by now. The body, through various filters or glands, and through the constant war

of the white corpuscles of the blood, fights against injurious germs and foreign bodies that may penetrate its outward armour. To wage this war, it must, however be fully equipped with the necessary munitions. Cartridges and rifles are no good unless the troops are fed, nor is food much use if the troeps have no weapons. The requirements must be complete- It was thus found recently that pigs fed on a diet deficient in lime and innoculated with the disease called swine erysipelas, eventually succumbed to the trouble, whereas pigs similarly inoculated and fed with a diet complete in every way

showed no signs whatever of infection. Vitamin D, which has an effect on the absorption of minerals required to be present. Questions of Minerals The question of minerals enters very much into the picture in pig. keeping for two reasons. The first is that a pig grows so very fast, attaining the weight of a ten stone man often in less than five months, that the bone-form-ing material alone must be added rapidly and in comparatively large quanti-

ties. Nature shows the necessity for this in providing half as much ash again in the milk of a sow as that of a cow, and over five times as much as that found in human milk. Cows’ milk thus will not necessarily suffice to keep a pig supplied with these essentials, and it is therefore wise to provide wood ashes or lime or hoth, or even some mineral lick for growing or in farrow pigs. The logical basis of this argument can be seen at once from these statements.

Some people-salesmen in particular —like to surround these “minerals” with an air of deep mystery, but when we come to think of the pantry or kitchen shelves at home, we see minerals everywhere in everyday use. Salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, are all purely mineral and we use a great deal of them. Owing to the variety of our diet—fruit, fish, wholemeal, oysters, whole barley, bran, corn flakes and so on, we humans get what we require as a rule, but the pig on a very restricted range of diet does not. Grass to be ■good must be short, leafy and well top-dressed, and even grass plus milk is at times not sufficient without some added minerals. In a recent article in the Pig Breeders’ Annual, 1938-39, by Mr S. H. Hart, Past President of the National Pig Breeders’ Association of Great Britain, it is stated, “In feeding sews at grass a balanced ration with minerals in the form of nuts has much to recommend it. “immature”'' In investigations made at Cambridge and completed last year, it has been shown that a pig is still “immature” at 200 Lb liveweight in the sense that It still requires a large amount of protein (meat meal, milk, cloves, etc.), lime and phosphoric acid at that age. This is significant in two ways. Firstly it explains why baconers and young **sows frequently go off their legs with the lime deficiency paralysis, and seccnly it demonstrates the necessity for still being careful in the feeding of a young sow. Paralysis of this nature, j swoollen joints, rickets and so on, are i all evidence of a lack chiefly of lime, and many are the pigs put right lately by keeping plenty of lime in the ! troughs and drums. The knowledge of | this fact is spreading fast, and it is safe to say that in districts where these troubles were common twelve months ago, they are now almost entirely absent. ’ It is necessary where the pigs are kept in small paddocks, to top-dress with at least a ton of lime per acre per . year. The most successful pig farmer in the north using this system of small paddocks uses two tons annually per acre, and uses slag or superphosphate also, in addition keeping lime in the milk drums. An Illustration

As an illustration. I arrived at a certain farm just after the vendor of some pig meals, licks, etc., the vendor claiming to have veterinary knowledge. A sow was suffering from paralysis of the hindquarters, and this salesman had prescribed certain of his preparations, “guaranteeing” to cure the pig as usual. A very superficial examination and a few enquiries showed, however,

that the real trouble had been caused an abscess, but the result cf a similar by a bad tempered farm hand hitting blew. One must not therefore too the sow on the spine with a batten, hastily jump to conclusions. However, Any deficiency in that case was to be the need cf minerals, more particularly found only in the mentality of the farm of lime, is apparent on the majority of hand. Similarly a nasty sore on an- farms in all districts, and its free use other pig’s head was not necrosis or will doubtless check much trouble.